


Play to Win

by thingsishouldntbedoing



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Freeform, Gen, I needed these thoughts out of my head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:49:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5096333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingsishouldntbedoing/pseuds/thingsishouldntbedoing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Guardian plays the game with everything to lose. A Guardian plays the game to break even.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play to Win

She is with the Vanguard when the hammer drops. Reports of a massive formation on the edge of the system, of Mara's fleet rising en force against it, of the destruction and wreckage of the remaining ships. A flood of data, salvaged from Awoken cruisers as the first scouts reach the remnants of the Queen's grand fleet, comes through as she feels her eyes itch, and she wonders how many days she's been awake.

Cayde takes pity on her, in his own way, and Zavala gives her work - sends her to Phobos. She's slain gods, she can handle a scouting mission.

She goes alone, in grief, and answers robotically. Cayde-6 asks if she's been turned into an Exo, but his joke falls flat and his transmission ends with an awkward apology. She never learns if it's meant for her or for him.

She finds pleasure in the mindless slaughter, tries to ignore the inkling of fear that is roused by the sticky, glittering substance she passes.

This is routine. Nothing is ever routine, that's the routine. Isn't it?

She watches a Cabal scrabble against the pull. No one is safe.

Not the Queen, not her fleet, and most certainly not the Cabal.

But the Guardians?

"It seems to require a _living_ host."

Ghost doesn't know his words are like ice around her already aching heart. She could not be Taken, because she was not _alive_.

Routine. Boots on the ground. A shotgun to the unfamiliar. She didn't need to know what they were, who Oryx was, why Eris was upset to know - these were creatures she needed to kill, and _he_ was the one who had left her people in ruins. Routine. Kill things that threatened the Reef, the City, the balance.

She had slain gods. She could do it again. She could do it again, right?

It wasn't a question.

She had slain gods.

The Dreadnaught. Sleepless patrols, mopping up the mess, hunting down Oryx, a sword, _reforged_.

The fall of a king, months pass, she had slain another god. She cemented her presence in the Tales of the Heroes. She had become a living legend.

Or not living.

She had slain gods.

Did that make her one as well?

She didn't remember returning to the Tower, racing towards Cayde with Void streaming from her fingertips, but she remembered Ikora's face in the glow of her holo screen.

_"The Queen's Brother is alive."_

"Where?"

Gods did not scour Mars for a glimpse of a fallen Prince, for whispers of a fallen Queen.

Gods did not cling to hope, braced for the fall, and sing the sorrows of the Awoken.

She had slain gods, but she was not one. She was not a god. But she was a Guardian.

And a Guardian had what gods did not. 

An AA gun brings her down over a desolate cityscape.

Bots, small and dark, find her. Crows.

"Uldren," she breathes his name, sees him standing before her, dark against the rusted sands.

"You're late," he says, as if he was waiting for her.

She was not a god. Gods played the game with nothing to lose.

"I got held up." She lets him pull her to her feet, feels the relief that he allows to grace his face for half a moment.

A Guardian gambles _everything._

He doesn't speak, but he dusts her shoulders off and grips her arms, as if to make sure she's real.

A Guardian plays the game with _everything_ to lose. A Guardian plays the game to break even.

"She's out there. Somewhere." His grip loosens.

"We'll find her," she sets her jaw.

She had slain gods. This time she could play to win.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr @ jocunditea


End file.
